Confident of getting the better of Sri Lanka in the upcoming One-Day International (ODI) series, Indian women’s cricket captain Mithali Raj said the home side’s experienced batting line-up would be its biggest strength in the matches starting on Sunday.

India and Sri Lanka will lock horns in a three-ODI and three-Twenty20 International (T20I) series.

“Even though we lost the practice match, we are very confident of victory against the visiting team since we have a good batting line up,” Raj said.

“Also the strategy will differ based on our opponents.

Our team is well-balanced. All the players in the squad had really done well in domestic cricket this season. Now we have a fielding coach as well and the team’s fielding standards have gone up,” she explained.

Coach Poornima Rao said being an experienced side, India would start favourites.

“We are not worried about the defeat in the practice match since we didn’t played full strength. In the ODIs we have the advantage of Mithali’s batting and the experience of Jhulan Goswami’s pace bowling,” she said.

Sri Lanka captain Shashikala Siriwardane said her team is the proverbial underdog going into the series.

“We do not have any special strategies for the series. We have good top-order batters. We are targetting at least 200 runs in case we bat first,”

First Published on January 18, 2014, 6:41 pmLast updated on January 18, 2014, 6:42 pm